The Road to Monkey Island
by Threepwillow
Summary: What do an irritated governor, two fast-talking Spaniards, and a voodoo MacGuffin have in common? Guybrush Threepwood is stuck on a ship with all three of them, on another adventure to the dubious Monkey Island. Slight Road to El Dorado crossover, oh god
1. They're Resourceful, And They Like Money

(A/N: I don't know why this is happening but it is. It's not really an El Dorado crossover so much as a Monkey Island fic that happens to have Miguel and Tulio in it. And it's not really a fic so much as an excuse to have Miguel and Tulio Insult Swordfighting.)

**Part 1: They're Damn Resourceful, And They Like Money**

"Those two."

Elaine made a face. "I don't know, they look a bit..._unsavory_ for what we're trying to do - "

Guybrush made a difference face. "Uh, _Elaine_?"

Elaine made a third face, this one complete with an eye roll. "Look, yes, pirates, I _know_, but if we're pursuing such a rare and hefty booty - "

"Hehe. Booty."

" - then I want to be sure the people we're splitting it with can be trusted." She sort of huffed and crossed her arms, in a very Elaine Threepwood-Marley sort of manner. Guybrush sighed, put a hand on her shoulder, and turned away from the blond and his scrawny friend with the dice toward a tall, surly man with an eyepatch. "What about him?"

"Mmm, there's just something _off_..."

"Elaine!"

"Well we wouldn't be having this problem if you could manage to keep the same crew for more than one of these ridiculous Monkey Island excursions of yours!" she said, snippy, in a very Elaine Threepwood-Marley sort of manner.

"That place _changes_ people," Guybrush insisted, but Elaine was having none of it.

"Look, I'm going back to the ship to get the last of this gubernatorial paperwork squared away. If you come back with any idiot who looks like he's going to con us out of our share of the treasure, it'll only be your own fault when that ends up happening."

"Yes ma'am," Guybrush whined, and she gave him a peck on the cheek and was gone.

"Crew, crew," he muttered to himself. "Where are Wally and Carla when you need them?" He was trotting past a fruit vendor's stall, thinking about buying a cart of oranges to fend off any potential scurvy, when a large older man with a long scar down his bicep plowed into his left shoulder, stuffing a metal canister into his arms and running away just as quickly. Guybrush turned to look back at the guy, then looked at the canister, but was startled out of his initial confusion and into downright panic when an irate Jamaican woman and two law enforcement officers appeared in front of him.

"Dere it is!" she cried, pointing at the object in the clueless Guybrush's arms. "Dis en't de man what cheated it offa me but I'm sure it's one a his accomplices! Dat shell game was rigged and dis belong to me."

"Is she telling the truth?" asked the taller officer.

"Well, I, uh - "

"Because if it is, we're going to have to take you into custody," said the fatter officer.

"That is, you see - "

"Of course it's not true!" chimed a voice, suddenly. Guybrush turned his headlights look away from the cops and toward an alleyway - an alleyway which immediately produced the blond man (who had just spoken) and his friend with the dice (who was about to speak).

"Not true at all!" cried the dark-haired man, as they crossed to Guybrush and the blond placed an arm around his shoulders that was actually the opposite of reassuring.

"This fine young man is an absolute paragon of righteousness," the blond continued. "Why, he'd never steal a thing."

"And who are you two to vouch for his moral character?" asked the taller cop.

The dark-haired man made a face. "Who are _we_?" he said, aghast, a hand pressed over his heart.

"I am shocked!" agreed the blond.

"This is our _cousin_!"

"Our own cousin Guywood!"

"Guy_brush_," corrected Guybrush under his breath.

"Guy_brush_?" asked the blond.

"Guy_brush_. _Threep_wood."

"...Right."

The two officers and the Jamaican woman were conferring. "Well," said the fatter officer, "they do look like him." And Guybrush had to admit to himself that they did - the blond had his coloring (he would also have been an autumn) and the dark-haired man definitely had his build, and even a similar face.

"I suppose this is crazy enough that they're probably not making it up," agreed the taller officer.

"Exactly!" the two men cried together, and they were swindling the cops and the Jamaican woman away, and soon the three of them were all the way down the street - without, Guybrush quickly noticed, the metal canister, which still sat in his slack, dumbfounded hands.

He glared at the two fast-talking Spaniards, who were high-fiving each other and sniggering like children. "How'd you do that?"

"Practice!" the blond sang.

"_Why'd_ you do that?"

"Well, I don't know, I suppose we just like to help a fellow scammer in need," said the other man with a devious grin and a significant glance at his cohort.

Guybrush made a face, and shook himself mentally in a very Guybrush Threepwood-Marley sort of manner. "But I'm not a scammer!" he insisted. He realized he was still clinging to the canister and, for emphasis, dropped it hard on the ground as though he'd just been informed it was underneath a hefty voodoo curse. (Which it probably was, he thought with a mental groan.)

The blond made a different face. "You're not?"

"No!"

"Oh," said the dark-haired guy, and his face fell a little. "Well, in that case, I guess we ought to go back to scamming ourselves, shouldn't we, Miguel."

"And leave this poor sap to get screwed, Tulio," Miguel agreed. "Toodle-oo!"

But though Guybrush wasn't actually a con artist, he had figured out two things about these two: They were damn resourceful. And they liked money. "Fine, whatever," he said, calling back over his shoulder as he walked away more slowly than necessary. "I was gonna ask you two to join my _pirate crew_, but if you're more interested in your con than searching for _buried treasure_, then - "

"Now slow down a moment," said Tulio, instantly in front of him.

"We...might be willing to take on a more lucrative job." Everything about Miguel was shining, blond hair and broad grin and sparkling eyes.

"But, _only_," Tulio added, "if it _is_ more lucrative."

"Well, if it were up to me, I'd hire you on the spot - I guess," Guybrush told them.

"But?" they prompted in unison. Creepy.

Guybrush sighed, and made a face. "But I have to clear it with my wife."

xxxxx

"I can't believe you!" she cried, somehow taller than she usually was.

"But Elaine - "

"Didn't I _specifically_ say - "

"They saved me from getting arrested, Elaine! They can't be all bad!"

"Only because they thought you were a conman like them!"

"Conmen, pirates - can't we all just get along?"

Miguel and Tulio sat on a couple of barrels that were resting off to the side of the main deck, while their new friend Guy_brush Threep_wood argued with his lovely but terrifying wife. For the most part, they giggled.

"W-pssh, w-pssh," coughed Tulio, making a whip-cracking motion with his wrist.

"In the worst possible way," agreed Miguel, munching on an apple he'd filched from that incredibly unobservant street vendor.

"Who do you think is _actually_ captain?"

"Of the boat or in the bedroom?"

"Miguel!" Tulio gasped, pretending to be shocked. "Must you be so crude?"

"Ahh, but I learned from the best, didn't I?"

"I'll tell you what, though, she could captain me whenever the hell she wanted to."

"And _I'm_ the crude one, he says." Miguel chuckled, finished off his apple, and tossed the core overboard. It bounced off the dock and splashed into the water.

The two of them tuned back into the fighting, where Mrs. Threep-whatever was still berating Guybrush. "They've never even had any sort of pirating experience before, have they?"

"We sailed a boat once," Miguel put in brightly.

"A...really...small boat," Tulio added.

The little missus rolled her eyes. "Great. Just great. I can't believe you agreed to hire these two on without even checking their credentials. We're not going to get rid of them now, you realize that?"

"Hey, we're standing right here," protested Tulio.

"They'll catch on quick," Guybrush insisted. "As long as they can swordfight and follow directions - "

"Oh, we're good at swordfighting," Miguel assured them. "That's the same on land or at sea."

A thought appeared to occur to Guybrush, because he winced, and then under the glare of his wife winced again. "Um, actually, it's not."

"It's not?" asked Tulio, unimpressed. "How so?"

"Well, pirates typically practice, um, _Insult_ swordfighting," the captain told them.

"Say what?"

"And when you're on land, that's no big deal, but when you're at sea..." Guybrush sighed, long-suffering, as if the very concept were ridiculous. "At sea, they have to _rhyme_."

Tulio grinned at Miguel, in a way that could only mean one thing.

"Insult Swordfighting?" Miguel said. "Never heard of it."

"Or else you're too stupid to remember a word of it," spouted Tulio, grabbing a spare blade from the barrel next to the one he was seated on and raising it toward his partner.

"I bet I can do it better than a nitwit like you can!" Miguel cried, drawing another and jumping up, ready to fight him.

"Wanna test that theory - _girl_ to man?"

Their blades clanked togther. "Oh come now, you're hideous even _not_ wearing a frock."

"I'd still be prettier than the last girl that sucked your - "

"Whoa whoa whoa!" cried Elaine suddenly. "Have you guys done this before?"

Swords still flying, they paused in their leaping about the deck and its barrels and crates and turned to look at her. "Nope!"

She looked at Guybrush, who was staring back like an expectant puppy, and made some signal that he seemed to understand. He nearly jumped for joy. "You're hired!"


	2. This Deranged Voodoo Garbage

(A/N: Hello, second chapter showing up a day after the first. I was totally not expecting that to happen, but hey! In this chapter: Elaine being bitchy, Miguel being cute and pitiful, and Tulio being a douchebag.)

**Part 2: This Deranged Voodoo Garbage**

Elaine Threepwood-Marley was forced to admit that she was impressed.

She didn't trust the way they would call out to each other in Spanish sometimes and then laugh, and she wasn't fond of the terribly unprofessional attitude they took toward everything they did, but they were getting the job done incredibly well for a pair of landlubbers. At least Guybrush hadn't picked that fellow with the eyepatch. They made it away from the docks relatively smoothly and set a heading for Monkey Island, by way of Mêlée, where she had to stop off and deliver the last of her paperwork in addition to attending a mandatory function.

By sunset they were well out to sea and had managed not to encounter any nefarious opposing pirates out for the (mostly nonexistent) contents of their treasure hold. As things began to calm down for the night, Elaine looked up from running inventory on their food supply to see the three (oddly similar-looking) men convening around the helm, chatting.

"It's so lovely to see a sunset over open water when you're _not_ fearing for your life," Miguel was saying.

"Ah, yes, starvation," said Tulio. "It's no - picnic."

Elaine chortled a little at the irony of his comment, but if either of the other two noticed they said nothing. "Tell me about it! There was this one time when I was stuck in a bumper car, and all I wanted was just some fresh grog - "

Having heard this story umpteen times - even the part she didn't need to be told because she'd _actually been there_ - Elaine wrapped up her inventory quickly and crossed the deck to interrupt the boys.

"I don't mean to interrupt," she interrupted, "but I think now that there aren't other ears around to listen, you and I ought to explain to these two exactly what we're out to do here."

"Oh really?" said Guybrush. "_You_ think we should? Because _I_ thought _your_ opinion was that they were _unsavory_ and couldn't be trusted."

"It's a bit too late for all that now, isn't it?"

"Sometimes I could do with your mind changing a little less."

"I'm _terribly_ sorry," said Elaine, unimpressed. "But if you wouldn't mind?"

"Right, right. Okay."

Elaine observed Miguel and Tulio as they listened with rapt attention to Guybrush's explanation - how the thrice-over dead Evil Pirate LeChuck had finally found some henchmen smart enough to listen to his instructions from beyond the grave and they had managed to do the unthinkable: they had fused his incredibly cursed soul to the power of an Ultimate Insult, the very concept of which un-manned men all over the Caribbean out of sheer terror. But the concentration of the voodoo magic was so immense that LeChuck couldn't even move, so currently he was stuck on Monkey Island terrorizing pirates remotely and sending said mildly competent henchmen to retrieve their treasure. Of course, as usual, his real target was the death of Guybrush and the abduction of Elaine.

She could tell they didn't believe a word of it, and was proven correct when Tulio opened his mouth. "So why hasn't he just attacked you guys outright?"

Guybrush grinned a little, which made Elaine smirk, too. He was _so_ proud of himself. "We've got voodoo connections, too. Installed in the cabin of this ship is a talisman that protects everything within a certain radius from the devastation of an Ultimate Insult. I put it together from a bunch of weird ingredients with the help of my friend the Voodoo Lady. It sure was hard to find a bright green tortoise shell around these parts, but - "

"And so your plan is to swoop in, stop LeBuck - "

"LeChuck," Guybrush interrupted.

" - and take all this treasure in the process, is that it?" asked Miguel.

"Well, yeah."

The Spaniards exchanged a look that did not go unnoticed by Elaine, and then Tulio started to speak again. "Look, guys and er, brushes - a little bit of voodoo I could handle, but undead zombie pirates? The Ultimate Insult? You don't get to be cons like us by believing these sorts of crazy things."

"He's telling the truth," said Elaine, suddenly defensive of Guybrush. Funny how that worked.

"The point is, as long as we come through with the gold in the end, we don't really care _what's_ going on," Miguel explained. "We just figured that if you were going to feed us a lie, well..."

"You could do a little better than this deranged voodoo garbage," Tulio finished. He looked around into the night, which had fallen quickly during Guybrush's story. "So where are we sleeping?"

Guybrush, indignant, didn't answer his question. "Fine!" he said, pouting. "Next time I'll try to make our _immortal peril_ more convincing."

Elaine sighed and patted his shoulder. "Just let it go, dear," she said, and showed Miguel and Tulio to their quarters.

xxxxx

Miguel awoke suddenly, then abruptly wished he hadn't, because he realized he'd been having one of Those Dreams.

They hadn't been an issue lately - not since El Dorado, not since they'd stopped sharing a room because Tulio was sleeping with Chel. Tulio still had no idea why she'd left, just that one day he'd gotten up and she hadn't been there, and neither had the horse. Once he'd realized she was gone for good he'd invited Miguel back into the bedroom, out of the uncomfortable storeroom, but he'd offered to stay.

Miguel knew why Chel had left, and he hated himself for it.

(He still didn't know why she'd taken the horse, though.)

But like it or not, Those Dreams seemed to start happening just as soon as he could hear Tulio's breathing and groaning in his sleep again. Totally embarrassing dreams. Overly sappy dreams. Occasionally, scorchingly hot dreams.

Sure, scorching dreams. No - sweat.

But this one hadn't been too sweaty. He'd been - well, okay, he'd been falling overboard off the side of Guybrush's ship, which wasn't exactly fun, but still. They'd been caught in a raging storm, rain and thunder swirling all around them, and he remembered just losing his balance and tumbling, tumbling, nearly drowning, only for a strong and wiry arm to wrap around his suffocating chest and haul him to the surface, where the clouds were dissipating and the sun was breaking through, and where he gasped for air and clung tightly to his dashing rescuer, held on to -

To Tulio. It was always Tulio. Bugger all.

Shining in the new sunlight, Miguel held Tulio close, Tulio held _Miguel_ close, and in his low teasing voice he told Miguel, "If you're going to be on a boat, you ought to invest in some swimming lessons."

He'd had one of Those Looks in his eye, and for a second there Miguel thought Tulio would _kiss him_ -

Only to awaken into the darkness of their tiny cabin with Tulio's arm thrown across him in his sleep, and Guybrush's loud snoring drifting in from the captain's quarters.

And a loud crack of lightning piercing the night air.

As incompetent as he may have seemed, Guybrush's snores stopped instantly, and Miguel could hear him instead scrambling out of bed and then onto the deck to prepare for...the wind and the torrential rain, which had also started, pounding loudly on the wood of the deck. Trying to ignore the twinge of déjà vu, Miguel nudged Tulio awake.

"Tulio! _Tulio_!"

"Altivo?" wondered Tulio, groggy.

"No, no, wake up! There's a huge storm that's just rolled in!"

"Oh, geez!" Tulio was finally awake, bolting up and struggling back into his shirt and shoes. Quickly the two of them made it up on deck and did their best to run around helping.

At the helm, Guybrush was frantic. "That's the second biggest stormhead I've ever seen!" he yelled over the clattering rain. "If we don't make it through this, we're screwed!"

"What can we do?" asked Miguel.

"I need you two over there, tying everything down! We'll be just as screwed if we make it through the storm but we're all out of provisions! If you manage that, just start bailing the water!"

"Aye-aye!" they shouted, and set about their assigned tasks while Elaine manipulated the sails into safety and Guybrush strained to keep the vessel upright.

The storm seemed to continue on for hours, until finally, finally, there was an end in sight. If they just managed to crest this next wave, the rain would probably let up, and -

"Oh!" cried Elaine, suddenly, and by the time they turned to see what was wrong there was nothing there but a tiny, ominous splash of water.

"ELAINE!" Guybrush shouted, voice cracking - he was so hoarse from yelling over the storm. "She'll drown!"

"I'm going in after her!" declared Tulio.

"No, wait, let me - "

"You've got to stay up here and steer the ship!" Tulio interrupted. "We can't make it this far and then capsize!"

"But I can hold my breath for _ten minutes_ - "

"Look, Miguel and I may catch on fast, but neither of us is skilled enough to guide a ship through a storm like _this_!"

"She's my _wife_!" Guybrush protested, but Tulio had already taken it at a dive, and Guybrush and Miguel were left alone on the storm-soaked deck, Guybrush clinging to the helm and Miguel to the aftmast, just staring at the place where Tulio had disappeared into the crashing waves.

"Tulio, you fool," he mumbled, but it died in the howling winds.

In the end, however, Miguel and Guybrush were forced to admit that they were impressed. Tulio's logic had been the correct logic, and as Guybrush was pulling them through the last dredges of storm, Tulio was surfacing with a gasping Elaine under his wiry arm, clambering up the rope Miguel had lowered and hauling her onto the deck.

Where they clung to each other a little too closely, and Tulio teased, "If you're going to be on a boat, you ought to invest in some swimming lessons."

Elaine giggled a little.

Miguel though, _Bugger all._

Unbeknownst to Miguel, Guybrush was in total agreement.


	3. Guybrush is Very Angry, Tulio is Fucked

(A/N: This fic. THIS FIC. Also I still kind of want to smack Tulio in the face.)

**Part 3: Guybrush is Very Angry, Tulio is Fucked**

Guybrush needed very badly to talk to Tulio, because he wasn't going to stand for this sort of shenanigans. He'd never really been the jealous type, but this was even more ridiculous than the eight-verse pirate song he'd been forced to endure two adventures ago. This was his _wife_. He wasn't going to take this sitting down.

Unfortunately, before he got a chance to stand up, an anxious Miguel was hovering in front of him, blocking his view of Elaine and Tulio.

"What is it?" he asked, snippy.

Wringing his hands, Miguel gave the last answer Guybrush was expecting. "I think I'm predicting the future."

"Say what now?"

Miguel sat next to him, and Guybrush glared back at Tulio again, who was helping Elaine take inventory of what was left after the storm. They were both laughing over something, which made Guybrush Very Angry. As an excuse to keep an eye on them rather than looking at Miguel, Guybrush pored over some navigational charts while he kept talking.

"The storm earlier this morning, I dreamt about it last night."

"Could have been any storm."

"It wasn't just any storm!" Miguel insisted, loud enough to draw the attentions of Elaine and Tulio. Interests piqued, they crossed over to Guybrush's navigating station and Miguel explained it to them too.

"But how do you know it was _that_ storm?" asked Elaine.

"Because I - you fell overboard," said Miguel, strangely. "And Tulio rescued - you, and said the exact same thing: 'If you're going to be on a boat, you ought to invest in some swimming lessons.'"

"You saw her fall over?"

"...Yes."

"And everything else played out exactly the same?"

"Yes!"

Elaine was the most intrigued. "Do you have a history of prophetic dreams?"

"No, none at all. I don't know what could have caused this."

Guybrush had an idea. "Have you touched or picked up anything out of the ordinary lately? Maybe some radioactive bananas, or - "

"Well, I've got this."

From the depths of his pockets, Miguel produced the metal canister that had gotten Guybrush into this mess in the first place.

"You kept that?!" he and Tulio demanded at once. Guybrush shot Tulio a glare, which he didn't catch. He was only just barely above saying "jinx!" just to shut the Spaniard up.

Miguel was trying to explain himself. "Well, I don't know, I figured if it were so important to that woman it was probably worth something!"

"That thing reeks of voodoo," said Guybrush.

"You can _smell_ voodoo?"

"It's an acquired skill."

"Well, I'll tell you what, I'm way more inclined to believe your voodoo zombie pirate Insult story now," said Tulio.

"Gee, I appreciate it," Guybrush said acidly.

"You be sure to tell us if you have any more visions," said Elaine. "I should like to know in advance next time if my life is going to be in danger."

"Will do," Miguel assured her, though he seemed a bit hesitant.

"Well, we barely lost anything in the storm - quite an accomplishment!"

"The only problem now is that we're so off-course, it'll be easier just to shoot straight for Monkey Island than to swing around past Mêlée," said Guybrush, tapping his charts. "Sorry about that. Honey."

"Oh, it's all right, Guybrush," said Elaine. "They'll get on without me. I guess all that's left now is for us to check and see how much damage was done down below. Tulio, would you mind helping me - "

"No!" cried Guybrush and Miguel at the same time. Tulio and Elaine looked at them, and they looked at each other.

"Er, what I mean is, I'll help Tulio check it out," said Miguel. "You ought to be resting, after your brush with death this morning and all."

"Exactly!" said Guybrush, relieved.

"Well, if you think so..."

"Go on, Tulio, I'll meet you there in a moment. I'm just going to discuss one more thing with Guybrush here..."

So Elaine went back to her room and Tulio belowdecks, and Guybrush was left staring expectantly at Miguel.

"Look, I'm going to have a word with Tulio," he assured him once the other two were out of earshot. "I can't _believe_ him. He can be a bit of an ass sometimes, especially about women - ugh, I just wish it would get through his thick skull sometimes."

Miguel wasn't looking at him any more, but at the hatch into which Tulio had vanished, with a look in his eye that Guybrush - though he was often criticized as imperceptive - was pretty sure he recognized.

"Thanks, for that," he said.

"Even more than literally, I feel like we're in the same boat," said Miguel. The two blonds smiled at each other, and Miguel followed Tulio down, leaving Guybrush to go back to the helm, and ponder on Elaine.

xxxxx

Tulio was fucked, and he knew he was fucked.

His initial reaction was to beat his head against the wall, but he was refraining, working instead on setting every barrel of gunpowder or tiny chest of treasure in the hold upright again. Also steadfastly ignoring Miguel when he dropped down to start helping him. He refused to even look...at...him -

"Cut it out!" Tulio said at last.

"Cut what out?" Miguel asked back innocently. As if he didn't know.

"You're doing it?"

"Doing what?"

"The - _face_!"

"How do you know?" Miguel said, and suddenly he wasn't joking any more. "You won't even look at me."

So Tulio, helpless as he was against his blond partner, turned to look at him, letting the empty crate he'd been righting go slack in his hands. Miguel's bottom lip was quivering, making him look totally pitiful and making Tulio feel pretty lousy. Tulio refused to let it get to him, though.

"Part of me wants to sock you in the face," Miguel declared, "but you don't even deserve that much."

"What are you talking about?" said Tulio, clinging back to the crate again.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about!" Miguel shot back. "No, you know what I'm talking about? That little voice, that you always tell me I don't have?"

"Miguel - "

"You appear to have lost yours. Maybe I ended up with it - "

"Look, _Miguel_ - "

"She's a _married woman_, Tulio!" Miguel's face was far from his cute little pathetic look now, all hurt and outraged in the way that felt like Miguel really _had_ socked him in the face. Or maybe the gut.

"It's not like I'm _taking advantage_ of her," said Tulio. "She likes it, too. You've seen how she's been acting around me - "

"You're _tempting_ her!"

"I can't help it if I'm _tempting_!" Tulio shouted defiantly. "If I'm what she _wants_!"

"You son of a - "

"And I can't help it if _she's_ what _I_ want!"

"Are you trying to convince me, or yourself, hmm?"

"What are you - "

"Are you going to be able to con these two like we planned?" Miguel demanded. "Or are you falling for her? Is this going to be like Chel all over again?"

And Tulio recoiled just liked he'd been socked in the face. "We said we wouldn't talk about Chel."

"I just don't understand why you're _always_ falling for the _worst_ possible _women_!"

"Well unlike _you_, Miguel, I can't predict the future, so I'm never going to know they're bad until I _try_."

"_Here_, then!" shouted Miguel, and he knocked the crate from Tulio's hands and forced the voodoo canister into them instead. In the process the lid got dislodged a bit, from all the jerking around, and from the slim crack a beam of purple-green light and mist shone out and struck Tulio. For a moment he felt like he could see his skeleton through his skin, and then he was looking at -

Himself? It almost looked like him, but something was different. This wasn't what he saw in the mirror; this was Tulio as someone else saw him. He was wearing a thick golden chain around his neck and a diamond-encrusted crown on his head, and -

And whoever's eyes he was seeing himself through, he was _kissing_. Hard. (Tulio knew he was a good kisser, but _damn_.) They pressed together close, and whoever he was must have had some gold on too because it clanked together, and there was a hand rough on the other-Tulio's jaw and oh. Oh. Oh, suddenly he was snapping back to the hold, and he knew whose eyes he'd been looking through, because he was staring right into them now, all green and clear and hurt and pitiful.

Tulio went back to steadfastly ignoring Miguel, picking up the things around the storeroom, and trying to figure out if there were a way to change the future.

And whether or not he wanted to.

xxxxx

"No, I'm _not_!" she reassured him.

"But you're around him so much - "

"I still don't trust him, Guybrush," said Elaine. "I've just been keeping an eye on him."

"But when he was hauling you out of the water - "

"I was so addled from the ocean that I thought it was _you_!" Elaine realized what she had said and put her hand softly to her mouth. That had sounded terribly sappy, hadn't it.

Guybrush's eyes lit up like she'd offered him a bottomless fountain of grog. "_Really_?"

She smiled at him. He was just too adorable for his own good - hardly a fearsome pirate. "Yes, really," she said. "Tulio is an attractive man, but if an evil zombie pirate can't lure me away from you with all his voodoo magic, I don't know what can. _You'll_ always be captain of my heart." Might as well lay it on thick, she figured. She leaned up on her tiptoes to kiss him tenderly, stroking a little at his hair, and then she flicked his earring. He always liked that.

Sure enough, when she pulled back away from him his face looked drunk and sated. "Mmm, yes _ma'am_."

"If it makes you feel better," she said, trying to soothe his sensibilities, "I'll leave Tulio alone."

Guybrush was still grinning. "You can do whatever you want if you just kiss me like that again."

So she did.


	4. Usually Something's Gone Wrong By Now

(A/N: Longer chapter today. I had a lot to get in. Also, this is the last time I try to make the use of a running gag into a running gag in and of itself, XD. Hope you don't get sick of it.)

**Part 4: Usually Something's Gone Absolutely, Terribly Wrong By This Point**

What it boiled down to was that Tulio wasn't speaking to Miguel, and Guybrush and Elaine weren't speaking to Tulio - so as such, the entirety of the ship was rather...speechless as it approached the twilit shore of Monkey Island the next evening, sand glowing a bit purple in the light of the rising moon. As significant as the island had been in his life, however, Guybrush couldn't keep completely silent about it. "Well, folks, here we are. Monkey Island, the creepiest place in the Caribbean."

"Doesn't look all that creepy," said Miguel.

"Not at first glance," Guybrush agreed, "but just watch out. This place has had everything, from carnivals to cannibals."

"Oooh, _spooky_," scoffed Tulio from the other side of the deck.

"I've discovered the secret of Monkey Island, broken the curse of Monkey Island, even had to escape from Monkey Island - "

"All right, love, cut the tour guide bit," said Elaine as kindly as possible. "Save the stories of your escapades for around the campfire."

"Are we setting up a camp tonight?" asked Miguel.

"I guess we could," said Guybrush, "but I was thinking for now we'd just stay on the ship."

"Good," grumbled Tulio. "I've spent enough nights sleeping out in the jungle to last me a lifetime."

"But sure, let's set up camp tonight."

Tulio glowered, and Guybrush did have to admit it was a bit low, but he didn't really care right now. He had mostly forgiven Tulio for what he'd been doing with Elaine, but not quite for what he was still doing to Miguel. If the two of them didn't make up soon and clear away some of the _awkward_ lingering in the salty sea air, he was going to hit both of them with his rubber chicken with the pulley in the middle. Plus, Elaine had said he could tell his stories if they had a campfire...and maybe they could roast some weenies...

She cleared her throat loudly in his ear and he jumped, realizing that he really should be helping them anchor and pack up supplies instead of spacing out. They unloaded the tents and a reasonable amount of food, secured the ship and locked the treasure hold, and trudged far enough up the beach that the tide wouldn't reach them, just on the edge of the jungle.

"I think this is the most well-prepared I've ever been on this island," said Guybrush, about an hour later once they'd constructed a roaring fire and were almost completely set up. "Usually something's gone absolutely, terribly wrong by this point."

"Don't say anything," said Elaine, "you'll jinx it."

Not two seconds later, Miguel and Tulio realized there were only two tents.

"I am not sleeping with _him_!" they cried, pointing dramatically at one another.

"Oh, brother," Guybrush groaned.

"Oh for pete's sakes, I've had enough of the two of you!" said Elaine. "You're acting like a couple of overgrown babies. I swear, if you don't stop it this instant, I'm going to smack both of you with...with a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle!"

"I don't care," said Tulio. "I don't think I can spend an entire night sleeping _on_ the ground, _in_ a tent, _with him_."

"Well, we've only got two tents," said Elaine.

"And you are _not_ sharing one with her," said Guybrush. Not if the little creep's life depended on it.

"Agreed," said Miguel with a glare.

"_Fine_," said Tulio. "So that works out to one tent with you and Elaine, and one tent with me and Captain Oblivious here."

"I think the saying is 'Captain Obvious,' pal."

"My point exactly."

"Well, if I'm holding the anti-Insult talisman, that puts both our powerful voodoo objects in the same tent," Elaine pointed out. "Guybrush, why don't you take this..." She pulled out the oil-smeared tortoise shell, which was starting to smell a bit funny, and pressed it into his hands. "And we can hang on to the predicting jar, or whatever."

"Sounds like a plan," said Guybrush.

"And I don't know about you," said Tulio, "but I'm going to turn in. I've about had it for today."

He disappeared into one of the tents, but not before Elaine pressed something into his hand, too.

"What's this?" he asked.

"Earplugs. You'll need them."

xxxxx

He didn't know what was happening, just that suddenly he couldn't see, and now he was getting manhandled by a couple of people with remarkably bony hands. They jerked him out of his tent and began frog-marching him across the beach for a bit before tying up his hands and feet, too, and slinging him over the back of a remarkably bony horse. He tried to scream out a little but the bag over his head that had blinded him was serving as a gag, too. He could barely even hear anything - his captors were talking, but it was just a low rumble of words in the very back of his foggy consciousness. The horse clopped further and further away from the camp...

And then Miguel woke up, sitting bolt upright in shock and colliding straight into Elaine head-first as she did the exact same thing.

"Ow!" she yelped, and then, looking into his eyes, realized what was going on and gasped.

He managed to speak first. "I had a dream I was being kidnapped!" he cried. "Do you think it's one of those - "

"I'm not certain," whispered Elaine - "but no, it must be, because I had a dream that I _was_ kidnapping - someone! But it wasn't you!"

"Well, no," said Miguel, "probably not. I think I've figured part of this thing out. If you're having a prediction, you don't see what you would see - you see what someone else would see."

"So I'm not the kidnapper, and you're not the kidnappee."

"That's it exactly."

She paused, and he tried to brace himself for what he knew was coming next. "So when you saw me go overboard, whose eyes were you watching through?"

"Well...I - "

He was cut off by the clopping of a galloping horse, and he and Elaine froze.

"The kidnappers!" They'd been so busy sitting around talking about it, they hadn't even thought that it could be happening just moments later! As fast as they could, they yanked on their shoes and burst from the tent, but it was no use. The horse and its three passengers were already too far down the beach to catch, and from the other tent a loud, repetitive snoring could be heard. Guybrush's snoring.

They'd taken Tulio.

"_No!_" cried Miguel out into the eerily silent night air. "_Tulio!_"

Elaine, too, was panicking. "I should have known it was Tulio, only Guybrush could sleep through a kidnapping, he sleeps like the dead - he'd probably sleep through _me_ getting kidnapped, of all people - "

"I'll bet that was it!" Miguel realized. "Whoever kidnapped Tulio - "

"Was expecting _me_ to be in the tent with Guybrush!" she cried, catching on. "They must be working for LeChuck, and they wanted to kidnap _me_, but they got him instead."

"...Well?"

"Well what?"

"Well, wake Guybrush up!" demanded Miguel, barely able to contain himself. "We've got to go and _rescue him_!"

So he fidgeted outside the tent while Elaine dove in to stop her husband's obnoxious snoring and drag him to his feet. At the confused look on his face, Miguel immediately began explaining their predicament - and without anything else around to interrupt, when Guybrush asked, Miguel didn't have a way out of it.

"Who were you in your dream when you saw Elaine fall overboard, then?"

Miguel fidgeted some more, not answering at first, but the Threepwood-Marleys just stared at him expectantly. "Oh, all right. I - I didn't exactly _see her fall_, like I said. I _was_ Elaine."

Guybrush raised one eyebrow. "Really."

"Really. I fell overboard, and then Tulio rescued me. That's why..." Miguel sighed and steeled his resolve. "That's why I didn't think anything of it. I'm used to having dreams where Tulio rescues me." He turned away from the two of them, facing off into the jungle where his partner had disappeared, and smiled a little at his own stupidity. "You see the truth is I'm - I'm rather in love with him," he said. "I'm afraid I always have been."

Elaine made a face. "Well is that all?"

He turned back to her and made another face. "What do you mean 'is that all'?"

"I figured that out a third of the way into your Insult Swordfight!" she said.

"And you pretty much told me after the storm the other day," added Guybrush.

"Well you're awfully flippant about it! This is a big deal for me! I've never told anyone about it! I just - "

"Hey, Miguel," said Guybrush, stopping him with a hand on his shoulder. "All these dreams, where he rescues you, right? Now you have to go and rescue _him_. From there, everything gets better." He stepped back to Elaine, slipping an arm around her waist. "Trust me."

Guybrush was smiling, so Miguel smiled too.

"Well all right then!"

xxxxx

It was tricky, because they had to cut the kidnappers off before they got back to LeChuck, but Guybrush had been to the island before and he knew all the shortcuts. And at first they couldn't quite come up with a plan, because that was really Tulio's forte, but Miguel had impressed and intimidated simpletons before and he knew all the tricks.

The dialogue and the rest of the plan was mostly Elaine.

The horse, its two undead riders and its live cargo rounded a corner and came face to face with the shadowy image of LeChuck projected onto a smooth wall of rock. They skidded to a halt at once, and from the way Tulio flopped around he was clearly unconscious. Miguel winced but remained as silent as possible, waiting for Elaine's signal.

"Fools!" bellowed Guybrush in his best LeChuck impersonation, while Elaine twisted around and moved the leafy branches she held to effect the silhouette's speaking mouth. "Be that my beloved Elaine?"

"Yes, Cap'n!" stammered the stockier skeleton pirate. "We've captured her!"

"Excellent work! Show her to me!"

"Aye aye!" said the slimmer pirate, and he lifted the rag-doll Tulio from the back of the horse with the other pirate's help, and removed the bag over his head. Tulio, of course, was not Elaine, and though LeChuck's surprise was as fake as LeChuck himself, the zombie henchmen seemed genuinely shocked.

"Idiots!" said Guybrush-LeChuck. "Ye be good enough to bind me to the Ultimate Insult but can't tell a scrawny, two-faced worm of a streetrat - "

_Hey now,_ Miguel thought, defensive.

" - from my pirate queen?"

"He was in the tent with Threepwood!" the skinny pirate argued, almost pleading.

"Arrh! You two, such insolent wastes of bone and rotting brain matter, I could hit ye in the head with me rubber chicken with the pulley in the middle!"

"We know you're upset, Cap'n LeChuck - "

"No," came Guybrush's real voice, "I mean I'm actually going to hit you in the head with a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle."

Elaine dropped the leaves and screamed "_Now!_" and while she and Guybrush sprang in for the attack with the aforementioned chicken bludgeons, Miguel darted swiftly out from an odd-smelling bush and hefted up Tulio's limp form, hauling him out of there and sprinting back to camp down Guybrush's shortcut. He knew the other two would be right behind him, and that they would be all right. He just kept running.

Tulio stirred awake on his back, groaning a little. "M...miguel?" he slurred.

"Hush, love, it's all right now," said Miguel, tightening his hold on Tulio from the front.

"I knew you...you'd save me."

Wide-eyed, Miguel stopped running, but Tulio had passed out again.


	5. The Same Old Tulio And Miguel

(A/N: I think it's hilarious how I'd planned for this to be a one-shot, then figured it'd get done in four parts or so, and now it's looking like it'll probably be seven. Clearly, I win. Also, here there be some more El Dorado canon, finally. This really does still belong in the Monkey Island section, though.)

**Part 5: The Same Old Tulio And Miguel**

Tulio awoke with Miguel in his tent, a wicked throbbing in his head, and the distinct feeling that he'd forgotten something important. He tried to piece it together in his aching brain chronologically: the argument over the sleeping arrangements, what seemed like barely five minutes of shuteye, the kidnapping and sensory deprivation, the uncomfortable horse ride, and then -

Then here, with Miguel still asleep beside him, almost protectively close, and the bright light of an early morning on Monkey Island peeking through the flap of their tent.

Yeah, there was definitely a piece missing there.

Careful not to wake Miguel, Tulio got up - though his reeling head protested the movement - and crawled out of the tent and into the new daylight. The waves were crashing loudly, and standing between the shore and Tulio was Elaine, staring off into the water. Against his better judgment, he walked slowly over to her.

"Uh, hey."

"Hello, Tulio," she said, not looking at him, just gazing into the sea.

They were silent for a moment.

"Where's..."

"Guybrush? He's still asleep. I've always been an early riser."

"Ah."

They were awkwardly silent for a moment.

"Do...d'you know what happened last night?"

"LeChuck sent people to kidnap me," said Elaine. "Needless to say, they missed."

"No kidding."

"I guess that talisman could keep out the Ultimate Insult, but voodoo-less zombie minions can just sneak right through. But they weren't expecting anyone other than me to be in the tent with Guybrush, so they nabbed you instead."

"And gave me one hell of a hangover, or something. You know a good cure?"

"Have you been bitten by a dog recently?"

"Uh, no."

"Then no, sorry."

"Oookay."

"They knocked you out," she continued, "but luckily we were able to stop them and get you back."

"Lucky me."

She turned to him, finally. "Tulio, we never could have saved you if it weren't for Miguel. He was quite adamant that we rescue you immediately." She flashed him an interesting smile. "I should hope Guybrush would have been that fervent about things had they actually managed to kidnap me."

They were companionably silent for a moment.

"We sure could have been something, Elaine," Tulio said, finally smiling back.

"I don't doubt it," she said. "But you and Miguel already _are_ something, and that's going to be so much better."

She walked back to her tent smiling, and he just stood there for a moment, looking at the place where she'd been, empty air that now contained just a view of the ocean. Then, smiling himself and shaking his head, he too returned to his tent, to discover that Miguel was awake.

"Was that Elaine?"

"Yeah," said Tulio.

"What were you talking about?"

_You_, he almost said, but he lied, "Nothing really."

"You know, I think Guybrush and Elaine are good people," said Miguel, with a small smile.

"Oh, I agree. Wholeheartedly."

"But we're still conning them out of this gold."

"Absolutely."

"I mean, they don't need it."

"Hardly. She's an elected official and he's a pirate. They've got a steady inflow of cash."

"And really," reasoned Miguel, "it's not the treasure they want out of this endeavor. They just want to defeat this LeChuck buffoon."

"Precisely," said Tulio.

"So tomorrow after they go to sleep then?"

"Sounds good enough to me - although Elaine did say she was a habitually early riser."

"Oh," said Miguel, "but Guybrush sleeps like the dead."

They exchanged a grin, and regardless of their strange relationship status at the moment, Tulio felt like they were finally back to the same old Tulio And Miguel.

xxxxx

They were walking through the jungle and louder than her own thoughts, all Elaine could hear was the shrieking of the _monkeys_.

"I suppose they don't call it Monkey Island for nothing," she grumbled, huffing breath up to her forehead in an effort to keep her hair from matting with sweat.

"I guess we should be glad it's not Jaguar Island, or something," said Tulio, trudging along just behind her, with Miguel just behind him.

Guybrush, out in front, seemed completely immune to the incessant chimp chattering. "Keep moving, crew! We have a lot of ground to cover before sunset!" He was inhumanly chipper, a mood of his which always drove Elaine bonkers - this on top of the apes? She really hoped they would at least stop for lunch - or to bathe, or _something_...

"How does he _do_ it?" Tulio groaned.

"I still haven't figured it out," said Elaine, "and I've known him for seven years."

"There weren't nearly this many screeching animals on our way to El Dorado," whined Miguel. Then he shot a panicked look at Tulio, and then they both winced.

Elaine's interest was instantly piqued. "El Dorado?"

"El Do-_what_?"

"No one said anything about - "

"Who believes in - "

"Oh, nice try, boys," said Elaine, "but you've slipped up. If you keep your voices down, Guybrush may not hear you, but I want to know _everything_."

So grudgingly, Miguel told her about winning the map with the loaded dice, and trekking through the jungle to find the city of gold. And Tulio explained how they'd been treated as gods by the locals, and how their con had gone wrong but they'd made it out okay. And they both glossed over the uglier details, like their pitiful boat ride, the arguments, and Chel, filling the gaps in with witty anecdotes about Altivo and that ball game with the armadillo.

"Guybrush isn't the only one with adventures," Miguel finished up with a bit of a satisfied smirk.

"What about me?" said Guybrush, finally realizing they were speaking. (How he heard them over all the monkeys, Elaine had no idea.)

"We were just wondering when you were planning on stopping for lunch," Tulio covered smoothly.

"Oh geez, I keep forgetting we actually have provisions," he said, immediately scrambling to undo his pack and take out some of the food. "Usually when I'm here I'm shipwrecked and I have to live off jungle fruit and the occasional injured seagull."

They broke for lunch, dislodging their substantial packs and munching on bread, cheese, jerky and bananas, and sipping on watered-down grog. As they ate, Elaine watched Miguel and Tulio from the corner of her eye, and decided she liked what she saw. They finally seemed to be themselves with each other again - themselves, and a little bit more.

"All right, grab those bags, folks!" Guybrush was calling again, far too soon. "We need to make good time to arrive at the stronghold tomorrow morning!" So they packed everything back up and kept on marching through the afternoon, trading the sun and sweat for the breezy evening air and trading the sound of yammering monkeys for Guybrush's toneless whistling. ("I'd almost rather have the chimps," muttered Tulio.) Finally, after climbing over a large outcropping of rock to arrive at a river in the valley on the other side, Guybrush informed them that this was the best campsite around and that they'd proceed to LeChuck's in the morning.

"So how exactly are you planning to defeat LeChuck, anyway?" asked Tulio as he helped Guybrush build up the fire.

"We've got our own Ultimate Insult, didn't we tell you?" he said. "They're surprisingly simple to make - you need a golden man, a silver monkey head and a bronze hat. Mine's about the size of an action figure."

Tulio set his log down rather suddenly into the flames, almost quelching them. "Huh. Well that's unexpected."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I guess I always thought something as ominous-sounding as the Ultimate Insult would be more...grandiose," Tulio admitted.

"Hm, maybe you're right. I guess the thing I've learned about voodoo is that it's actually pretty straightforward."

"I suppose that's convenient."

The fire grew into a decent-sized blaze, and Miguel and Elaine finished pitching the tents. They actually did manage to share some campfire stories this time - Guybrush of the treasure of Big Whoop, and Tulio of a saucy girl in Barcelona - and then it was time to turn in.

Tulio and Miguel didn't even bother to go to sleep.

"So I've got the...thing," Miguel whispered, hefting the voodoo canister in one hand. "So they don't accidentally dream us sneaking away."

"Yeah, well, we still have to steal the other...thing," Tulio hissed back, as they slowly crept out of their tent. "Can't have LeChump offing us before we get the gold."

"Don't worry about it, there's no way we'll wake Guybrush up," said Miguel. "Should I swipe the Ultimate Insult too?"

"Nah, we don't need to fight, just to run," said Tulio. "It's not worth it."

Sneaking into the Threepwood-Marleys' tent and coming back out with the anti-Insult talisman was embarrassingly easy. "How much gold you think we can get back to the ship with us?" asked Miguel.

"We'll work that out when we get there," said Tulio. "Come on, let's get going, We don't want Elaine waking up."

With both the voodoo artifacts in hand, the two conmen snuck off into the night, toward the faint glow of LeChuck's stronghold on the horizon.


	6. Tulio Has Had It With This Fruit

(A/N: I didn't realize this chapter was going to be so long! Also, Tulio and Miguel finally manage to fool around a little bit, so if that squicks you I guess this is your warning…)

**Part 6: Tulio Has Had It With This Fruit**

"Okay, Tulio, I realize we're pretty good at blending in and pretending to be people that we aren't exactly."

"Uh-huh."

"It helps to not be very distinct-looking, I suppose."

"Uh-huh."

"I mean, we were even able to pretend to be gods for a while."

"Uh-huh."

"But correct me if I'm wrong...we - don't really have a feasible way of pretending to be _skeleton zombie pirates_, do we?"

"Huh-uh."

Miguel sighed. Tulio seemed pretty glum about the whole thing; he was probably berating himself for not coming up with a better plan than this. Even Miguel had to admit the situation looked pretty bleak. They were hiding in the thick upper branches of a fruit tree of some sort, just beyond the halo of light that surrounded LeChuck's stronghold. The glow came from a couple of big bonfires and numerous smaller torches, lighting up the compound, which milled with LeChuck's various henchmen in the faint haze of the very early morning - none of them too conspicuous in appearance, save for the fact that none of them had any _skin or organs_. Like the two who'd kidnapped Tulio, all of these minions were the undead.

"We've got to make it in _somehow_," said Miguel, still trying to get Tulio to speak.

"We _do_ make it in somehow, that's just it," said Tulio, finally.

For a brief moment Miguel was confused, but then he remembered. "Your prediction back on the ship!" he exclaimed. "You saw us with the gold."

"Yeah," said Tulio, almost too quickly.

"...That's not all you saw," realized Miguel. "There was something else."

"No, that was pretty much it."

"Well you clammed up awful quick for someone who isn't hiding anything."

"I just want you to hush so I can think about this, Miguel."

"Fine, fine," he said, figuring it was best not to push it. He sighed again and turned away from Tulio, back to LeChuck's little anthill, and that's when he and Tulio both saw them.

Their ticket in.

Emerging from the jungle around to their left a little were a pair of men, who began talking somewhat animatedly with a messenger of LeChuck's as soon as they encountered him. They were wearing sarongs and had giant fruit-shaped masks on their heads, but they seemed to be sporting a good amount of flesh and blood on their bones, and that was all that mattered. After their brief discussion with the skeleton drone they were allowed to enter the compound freely.

Miguel looked at Tulio. Tulio looked at Miguel.

"We've got to get us some masks!"

xxxxx

"_Guybrush!_"

He was instantly awake.

"E-elaine?"

"They're _gone_!"

Now he was _definitely_ awake, and stumbling out of the tent. "Whoa, what?"

"Those oh-so-trustworthy _conmen_ you hired on as crew have vanished into the night," she informed him, pointing angrily at the empty tent for emphasis. "I can't _believe_ this. I can't believe _them_."

"Now hang on," said Guybrush, "maybe they're just out foraging for some fruit for breakfast."

"We've got _plenty_ of food!" she insisted. "Plus, I highly doubt there's nothing missing. Surely they've taken that can of voodoo with them that Miguel had - "

"Well, I've still got the Ultimate Insult, and - "

Guybrush groped for it, found nothing, and froze. They said it at once.

"The _talisman_!"

"Great," groaned Elaine, "so they've clearly got something planned where they're getting far away from us - "

"But wait," said Guybrush suddenly. "This may just be my brain working a little screwy first thing in the morning, but if they've got the talisman, why hasn't LeChuck managed to attack us yet?"

This finally paused Elaine's tirade, and Guybrush was about to sigh in relief, but she merely started up again. "Maybe he just hasn't realized we're accessible."

"Someone as hell-bent - uh, no pun intended - as LeChuck? I doubt that."

"Well maybe he just can't attack anything so close to his own location."

"He managed to scare most of the cannibals off the island, and now they just come to pay homage at their grave pit once a month!"

"Well maybe - ugh, I don't know, where's the _spell_?"

"We don't have the one for the anti-Insult talisman, though."

"We've got the one for the _Insult_, don't we?"

"Oh, right."

Dodging the waves of sizzling hot anger rolling off his wife, Guybrush rooted around in his bag until he found his log book, into which he'd paper-clipped the instructions and warnings he'd pieced together about the Ultimate Insult. There was the list of ingredients and the way to assemble them...there were some notes he'd taken about the ancient Monkey Kombat language - ah, here! The description of its vile power. He read it aloud.

"The Ultimate Insult's strength as a weapon stems from its power to crush man's very ego with its sheer derogatory force. Even the bravest of men are reduced to cowards under its ancient might. The only way to defeat an Ultimate Insult is by using another.' That's where it cuts off. I don't see how we're avoiding it."

"Sheer derogatory force...bravest of men reduced to cowards...crush man's very ego - _wait_!" cried Elaine.

"Uh, what?"

"Crush _man's_ very ego. Even the bravest of _men_. Don't you see? We're repelling the Ultimate Insult because I'm a _woman_!"

Guybrush blinked at her. "Okay, there is no _way_ that's it."

"Well what do you suggest, then?" she demanded, instantly cross again.

"If that were the case, it couldn't have come from monkeys!"

"Did you ever battle a _female_ monkey in Monkey Kombat?"

"No, but - "

"And does LeChuck have any _female_ zombie minions working for him, that you've ever seen?"

"...Come to think of it, no, but - "

"Then this is the best we've got to go on, Guybrush! Now come on, let's get going! We've still got the Ultimate Insult and we've still got to defeat LeChuck. Especially if we want to get there before those two _jerks_ take all the gold."

She was already packing things up to go, so Guybrush started helping her with it, but he was still missing something.

"This may just be my brain working a little screwy first thing in the morning, but... We don't really need all that gold. And we're still safe to stop LeChuck. Why are you still so angry about all this?"

"Because," she said with a bit of a pout, "I was finally starting to trust them."

xxxxx

Tulio looked at their reflections in the river and scowled. Was this really the best they could come up with?

"I think they look quite nice," chirped Miguel. "For such short notice."

Miguel was wearing his pants and shoes, his shirt tied around his waist by the sleeves, and a tree stump, hollowed out and outfitted with eye holes so he could wear it over his head. The roots still stuck down from the bottom, scraggly around his shoulders. Over Tulio's head was perhaps the single largest fruit he had ever come across. They'd scraped it out inside down to the rind - even eaten some of it, it had tasted a bit like mango - and given it eye holes, too. He was down to his vest and his pants. His short was wadded up around his hair inside the fruit to keep it from getting sticky. They looked ridiculous.

"Well, it's sure a step down from royal robes and holy headdresses," he grunted, "but I guess it could be worse."

"It's all in how you play it!" agreed Miguel, voice echoing inside the log. "Now come on, quickly!"

And so, exuding as much of his false confidence as he could muster, Tulio strode calmly next to Miguel up to the edge of LeChuck's territory. One of the undead workers approached them almost immediately.

"Oh, there's more a' ya today?"

"Um, yes," Tulio said with a cough. "I'm - Mangolio and this is - "

"Stumpy," Miguel offered.

"All right, I guess you're cleared, Just follow the other guys. Hey Captain! We got a couple more cannibals here!"

_Cannibals_?

"Arrh," boomed an angry, massive-sounding voice, "just tell 'em to be quick about it!"

Not anxious to stick around, Tulio and Miguel scampered in the direction that the other two masked men - cannibals! - had been heading earlier. When no one appeared to be looking - though who knew, with the peripheral vision in these masks - Tulio yanked Miguel behind a small cabin and began panicking.

"Cannibals? That's who these guys are?"

"It doesn't really matter now, does it?"

"I did _not_ sign up to pretend to be a cannibal!"

"Look, I don't think anyone's going to offer us a nice _human sandwich_ while we're out and about over here, so let's just get the gold and go!"

"Right," said Tulio, trying to be calm. He let Miguel up off the wall of the cabin where he'd had him pinned, and he got back up and walked jauntily straight past Tulio.

"You know, if it weren't for these masks," he said, "I'd've quite liked the rest of that."

By the time Tulio had worked that out - him, with Miguel pinned against a wall, all sweaty from the jungle and shirtless to boot - Miguel had disappeared, and he was dashing to catch up.

xxxxx

It was an awful lot of gold.

They'd had a bit of difficulty trying to remain inconspicuous, but the security was surprisingly lax (or else surprisingly gullible) and the cannibal disguises had gotten them just enough clearance to sneak around and find the trap door to the treasure keep, and now that they were inside, well...it was an awful lot of gold.

"I haven't seen this much since - "

"El Dorado," Tulio agreed. "We can't carry all of this."

"Well, not all of it's worth anything," Miguel pointed out, and he was right. There was an awful lot of junk in there, too. Sacks of wooden nickels. Crates of dull, rusty weapons. A huge antique cannon. Several books of voodoo spells, some of which were so old the pages were rotting out. A giant chicken suit.

Miguel wasn't touching that one.

"Okay," said Tulio, "I have had it with this _fruit_." With a bit of struggling, he tugged it and his shirt off his head and sucked in a huge gasp of air. "So nice to not be breathing in that smell, you have no idea."

"I believe it," said Miguel, tugging his mask off as well and shaking bits of bark out of his hair.

They looked at each other, flush-faced and grinning.

"Miguel...we've really done it this time."

And it was about then that Miguel knew he was done for, because even with his hair matted and sweaty, his face sticky and smudged with dirt, all of him smelling nauseatingly sweet, Tulio was absolutely gorgeous. He was quickly piling on as much jewelry as would fit under his mask, necklaces and earrings and a huge diamond crown, but Miguel was moving almost in slow motion. When Tulio saw that he wasn't doing much of anything he waved him onward. "Well, come on!"

"Hang on," said Miguel. "Just - don't move."

He tugged on the one necklace that was halfway over his head already, and then he grabbed his best friend by the side of the face, leaned in, and kissed him for all he was worth. And it didn't stop for a good, long moment.

And both of them were clearly enjoying it.

When it was over Miguel was backed against a stack of books and chests, and Tulio was grinning.

"I guess it was inevitable," he chuckled.

"You...you saw that already. From the jar," Miguel panted, embarrassed.

"Yeah," said Tulio. "But I think I like it better from this end."

Miguel's heart soared, but just as they were leaning in to start again, a huge thundering cry of "_Threepwood!_" shook the whole base, and a book fell from the stack and landed at Miguel's feet, open to a very, very crucial page.

"We can't do this," he said after a moment.

"The con? Or the kissing?"

"The former," Miguel clarified, pointing at the book. "I hope to be doing the latter quite a bit more from now on."


	7. Got It In Two

(A/N: Whoa, okay, to make up for the last chapter being oddly long, this one is unintentionally a bit short. But the next chapter is going to be the Big Finish, so I guess this one was just fated to be this way. In other news, I am endlessly entertained at LeChuck and Guybrush making fun of each other's penises.)

**Part 7: Got It In Two**

"_Threepwood!_"

"It's Threepwood-_Marley_ now," Guybrush whined, though he knew LeChuck couldn't hear him. "How long are people going to keep making that mistake?"

"In their defense, you have gone around introducing yourself as 'Guybrush Threepwood, mighty pirate' for a number of years now," Elaine pointed out.

"Yeah. It does kinda roll off the tongue better. Which building d'you think he's in?"

"Try the middle one and we'll work outward from there."

"Sounds good. Hang on."

With one arm wrapped firmly around his petite wife and the other clinging tightly to their length of vine, Guybrush Threepwood-Marley leapt from his perch in the tallest, sturdiest tree they could find nearby and swung into the zombie camp over the heads of all LeChuck's minions. The air whistled dramatically around them, they executed a perfect, picturesque arc - and at the very height of that arc, the vine unceremoniously snapped, and they hung in the air suspended by momentum for a split second before plummeting downward.

"Ahhhh!" they both screamed, pitches far too similar for Guybrush to retain his dignity. Clutching desperately at each other, they fell and fell until they burst feet-first through the straw-thatched roof of a building and landed on its dirt floor. As Guybrush picked himself up and helped Elaine to her feet, making sure she still had their Ultimate Insult in hand, it occurred to him that the building's only other occupant was an irritatingly familiar heavy-set bearded pirate - one whose entire body was now tinged faintly gold, save the hat on his head that glowed bronze and his glinting silver belt buckle, which was shaped like the head of a monkey.

"Well," said Guybrush, blinking at LeChuck, "that's convenient."

"You great blond buffoon!" cried LeChuck, attempting to lunge for Guybrush but barely twitching a couple of millimeters. "Why, if I could budge, you'd be dead already!"

"Not so fast," said Elaine, brandishing their own (rather smaller) Ultimate Insult at the undead pirate. "We've not come in here unprepared. We're ready to take you down once and for all!"

"Oh, sweet Elaine, _why_ have ye chosen this lily-livered ninny over me? Think of all the power I could give you!"

"I think she's thinking more along the lines of all the, ah, _nicer_ things you _can't_ give her," Guybrush commented with a bit of a leer, tugging her closer to him and wrapping his hand over hers around the Ultimate Insult.

"What be a few - _small_ earthly pleasures against the majesty of eternal life as Queen of the Undead?"

"Trust me, pal, I don't think your offer _measures up_."

"And _anyway_," said Elaine with a glare, "this isn't about _earthly pleasures_ or eternal life, it's about _love_! I could have sworn we just went over this! Guybrush Threepwood-Marley is the only man I will ever love. That is why he is my _husband_ and _that_ is why we're here to get rid of you!" And she waved the Insult dramatically in his direction. And predictably, nothing happened.

LeChuck blinked at her, and for all his professed love for her he was barely holding back an amused grin. She turned to look at Guybrush and he was facing sheepishly away.

"_What?_" she demanded.

"Uh, you...don't really know how to use an Ultimate Insult, do you?" Guybrush said, trying to be kind about it.

Elaine looked at their small figurine, then at LeChuck, and then back to Guybrush. "Well if you're so smart then _you_ do it, mister mighty pirate!"

"Don't mind if I do! Hand it over."

She placed the Insult fully into his hands before throwing up her own, turning away. "Fine, fine. I'm _only_ the governor of the entire tri-island area, and it's not like I'm your last line of defense against an _ego-shattering talisman of evil_ - "

"Honey?" said Guybrush.

"_What?_"

"I could still really use your help."

He smiled sweetly at her, and it melted her heart the same way it always had, so she stepped up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist, closing her eyes and burying her face between his shoulderblades. "Do it," she commanded into his back.

And suddenly whatever it was, he was doing it. She could feel the whole of him humming with the power of the Ultimate Insult, both the magic their own was emitting and the force she was deflecting as the Insult-repellent. It was a strange sensation, as though it should be burning but it wasn't, fizzling through her like a firecracker; she realized suddenly that this must be what most voodoo felt like, and how fortunate she was to have mostly avoided it, except for that one time she'd ended up as a solid gold statue. She was vaguely aware of voices coming from the two men, though not sure if they were actually speaking, as the voices seemed half-human and half-ape, speaking words she had never heard before. All in all it was very surreal.

The whole thing had been going on for nearly twenty minutes when it occurred to Elaine that Guybrush's legs were getting a bit wobbly and that perhaps it should not be taking this long. She squeezed around him a little tighter and he grunted - she definitely knew it was him doing the grunting. Was something going wrong?

"Guybrush?" she called, but he didn't respond. "Guybrush? Love?" She shook him a little and he almost collapsed - something was definitely up. She peeked over his shoulder. "Er, LeChuck?" He didn't answer her either, though it did reassure her that his shiny golden form seemed to be vibrating a little around the edges. What on _Earth_ was happening?

She didn't dare let go of Guybrush - she was practically the only thing holding him up by this point - so there was only one thing she could think of to do.

"_Help!_" she cried. "Somebody _please_, come quick! Hel--!"

And surprisingly quickly, help came.

"You've got to get out of here!" an oddly echoing voice yelled, and suddenly Elaine found herself pinned to the floor, both she and Guybrush having been tackled bodily away from LeChuck by someone in a large fruity mask.

She looked up at him, where he lay sprawled across her almost comfortably (conversely, she was pretty sure her elbow was lodged rather awkwardly against Guybrush's spine). "Cannibal!" she screamed, still scared for her life and already trying to concoct excuses as to why she wouldn't taste good - but then she looked closer at the eyes behind the mask, the solid (if scrawny) form on top of hers, and her heart was almost back to beating normally. "No," she breathed, "_Tulio_."

"Got it in two," he said, and even with the mask she knew he was grinning. "Now grab the hubby and let's _go_!"

With Tulio's help, Elaine lifted the trembling Guybrush to his feet - but he wouldn't stand, so Tulio and Miguel - also dressed as a cannibal - made him a sort of chair out of their arms, and as they were hoisting him into it she pressed a soft kiss to his clammy forehead.

Then the two of them were rushing him out of LeChuck's shack, and Elaine could do nothing but follow.

xxxxx

Guybrush didn't really remember passing out, but when he snapped back to consciousness with Elaine, a very woodsy Miguel and a very sticky Tulio hovering over him, that was really the only thing that could have happened.

"Guybrush darling, thank goodness!" Elaine breathed, throwing her arms around his neck. He blinked and groaned a little, but he could still feel all his extremities and he knew his name was Guybrush Threepwood-Marley so he figured it was all right.

"You were shaking like a leaf," said Miguel, sounding a bit worried. "I'm glad to see it's wearing off."

"What happened to you?" asked Elaine, sounding significantly more worried.

"I - I don't know," he said. "I felt like we were fighting just fine, Insult to Insult, but even with your protection I couldn't seem to win."

"That's because you can't fight Insult to Insult," said Tulio. They turned to look at him. He was brandishing an old, decrepit book, which he set on the ground between the four of them where they sat (very temporarily - Guybrush could hear the skeleton minions clattering around looking for them) hidden in some bushes and started flipping through in search of a specific page.

"Well, you _can_," added Miguel. "But as you may have just noticed, it doesn't accomplish anything."

"Hey now," Guybrush said suddenly, "you guys ditched us for the gold! Why should I believe anything you say?"

"Oh, you don't have to believe _us_," said Tulio. "You just have to believe the book."

He turned the proper page so that it was upright toward Guybrush, and from the moment he saw the large torn-out piece that was missing, he knew they were right. He lifted out his log book and fitted the section back into place.

"If you think about it," said Elaine after a minute, "this actually does make quite a bit more sense."

Guybrush looked at the total text of the ripped sentence:

_The only way to defeat an Ultimate Insult is by using another powerful voodoo artifact known as the Ultimate Comeback._


	8. I Only Ever Wanted Adventures With You

(A/N: Well, this is it – the extra-long final chapter. Thank you to everyone who's been enjoying this fic; I hope you like it! About Miguel and Tulio's surnames…I pulled them out of my ass, though I do think I took Tulio's from another author who used it, because I liked it. But I think they work. It's not like it really matters anyway. Enjoy!!)

**Part 8: I've Only Ever Wanted Adventures With You**

"An Ultimate Comeback! How come I've never heard of this?"

"How should I know?" said Tulio. "I just think we better go about making one." He pointed to the list of ingredients and Guybrush and Elaine craned back in to read them.

"A piece of rubber tree - "

"I am rubber, you are glue!" said Guybrush mockingly.

" - a golden chain and - the hair of God?"

"We don't know either," Miguel admitted.

"There's a patch of rubber trees a little ways away from here. If we book it we can get there, make the Ultimate Comeback and get back before it gets too dark."

Tulio opened his mouth to agree, but then something occurred to him. "Uh...can we stop somewhere and bathe first?"

Sp they set out toward the rubber trees by way of the river, and when they got there they politely split up to avoid seeing each other. At first, the men all went one direction and Elaine another, but she paused a minute and looked back at them, devious.

"_Guybrush_," she said pointedly. "Why don't you come..._this_ way?"

"Yes ma'am," he said immediately, face falling into a slack grin. "Uh, catch you in a minute, guys." He followed eagerly after her, leaving the two of them chuckling as they stripped down.

Oh. _Oh._

"Something on your mind, Tulio?" said a very naked Miguel with a very naughty smirk on his face. He darted into the water, and Tulio barely managed to get out of his pants before chasing after. He was very glad to discover that the water was freezing. (And free of piranhas.)

Miguel lay almost completely into the water, rinsing the bark and dirt from his hair. "It's hard to believe we've gone through all this," he said.

"What do you mean?" said Tulio, who was Not Looking.

"The pirating, the voodoo, the - _adventure_," Miguel clarified, sitting up, splashing the frigid water everywhere. Drops of it collided with Tulio's back. "I've missed this," he said softly. "I've only ever wanted adventures. With...with you."

Tulio had to turn around. "It's...pretty nice," he admitted, although whether he was talking about adventuring or about the view he currently had of Miguel even Tulio didn't really know.

Then suddenly they were kissing again.

Tulio really had to figure out how this kept happening.

"Mmm," murmured Miguel, "I've missed _this_ as well."

"Since just this morning?"

"Absolutely." He tugged Tulio back in for more, and there was more, _much_ more, and - Tulio was very glad that the water was freezing. And that he was waist-deep in it.

"H-hey now," he finally managed, "we're in this river because we're supposed to be getting _clean_."

"Spoilsport," said Miguel, but he let Tulio pull away and wash the fruit stickiness from his hair - the texture and the cloying smell were really starting to drive him insane - and then they got out, kissed a bit, dried off, kissed way more than was necessary, and put their clothes back on to go meet up with (what Tulio assumed were the similarly occupied) Guybrush and Elaine. By that point, he needed a moment or so away from Miguel, so when they reached the rubber trees and Guybrush said he was going to go look for a decent log, Tulio offered to search with him, leaving Miguel and Elaine to try and figure out the oddball part of the spell.

Guybrush seemed strangely friendly with Tulio. He didn't object to it, but it still began to bug him after a while. "So...we ditched you."

"Yeah, you did," said Guybrush, still unnervingly nonchalant. "Is this one too lumpy?"

"Better not risk it." Tulio kept checking the trees and fallen logs, but he pressed the issue. "We ditched you, but...you're not pissed at us?"

"I am a little disappointed," said Guybrush, "but I think what you're not getting here, Tulio, is that I'm a _pirate_. A pirate that you may have noticed has to hire on new crew members pretty often. I've had people turn mutinous on me over _artistic differences_ before. Compared to that, an enormous mountain of gold seems like a pretty good incentive."

Tulio smiled, almost laughing. "Yeah, I guess you've got a point there."

"Besides," said Guybrush, hefting up a thinner but sturdy bough he'd deemed worthy, "you came back."

They were almost back to the spot where they'd left the other two, having carved out a thick, round slice of their chosen log to take back with them, when Miguel came rushing up to Tulio, bustling with excitement. "We've got it!" he cried, jostling Tulio's arm.

"What, what, what?"

Miguel grinned at him. "The hair of God, Tulio, the hair of God!" He paused for dramatic effect. "Well, _we_ were gods once, weren't we?"

Tulio's eyes lit up, albeit a bit dimly. "That's so ridiculous that it might actually work!"

So they ran back to Elaine, and quickly set about assembling their Ultimate Comeback. Guybrush stripped the chunk of rubber tree wood of its bark. Tulio and Miguel each cut a skinny clump of their long hair off, and Elaine took it all and deftly braided it together. They attached it to the golden chain that Miguel had stolen from LeChuck's treasure keep, and it was just long enough to wrap around the circumference of the log twice.

Tulio, who'd been holding it, felt a brief sizzle of catalyzing voodoo. "It worked!" he marveled, realizing he'd barely been expecting it to.

"_Yes!_" cried Miguel.

"Now, it says here we need something to channel the force of it with - a crystal or a gem or something, for it to focus through," said Guybrush. "Elaine, honey, I hate to ask, but..."

She looked at him for a split second, then realized what he was getting at. "Oh - _fine_. But if you lose it or it breaks or something, _I'm_ picking out the new one, because I _really_ don't trust you not to muck it up again." And she tugged off her wedding ring and slapped it into his hand. He carved a little notch into the flat top surface of the Ultimate Comeback and wedged it in by the band, so the big blue diamond was glinting out.

"Well, let's fire this baby up," said Guybrush.

"Now? What for?" asked Elaine, raising an eyebrow.

"We need a test run," he said. "I'm not going back in there with _another_ supposedly mighty voodoo force that doesn't do anything."

"Good point."

"Here, why doesn't Elaine test it out?" suggested Tulio. "That way you can go ahead and use the real Ultimate Insult against her, because she's immune."

"Totally what I was thinking. Here, up in this clearing, out in the open."

They positioned themselves accordingly and Guybrush took up the Ultimate Insult. Almost immediately he flung out some of its power, but nothing happened to Elaine. Tulio, standing next to her to help in case something went wrong (Miguel was likewise posted by Guybrush), nudged it a little with his elbow. Guybrush tried again, but on Elaine's end there was still no reaction.

After a minute he stopped and called out to her. "Elaine? What's going on?"

"I don't know!" she said. "It's like - I can feel it trying to work, but it isn't _working_."

"We got all the parts right," said Miguel.

"Well, mostly - we still don't know if you two _really_ counted as gods. Maybe that's it," said Guybrush.

"No, I felt it go together," insisted Tulio.

"It isn't like that, anyway," said Elaine. "Not - not like a ship with no sails, but like no wind _in_ the sails."

"Pirate analogies," Tulio quipped.

"Let me see it," Guybrush said, and he crossed the few paces between them, with Miguel right behind him. At the latter's approach, it buzzed a little in Elaine's hands.

"Something's happening!" she exclaimed.

"Give it here, then," said Miguel, and he took it from her. In his hands it sizzled more strongly, especially when he held it slightly to the right.

Tulio, ever the tactical mastermind, was still pleasantly surprised when it suddenly all clicked together.

"...Guys. That's _it_."

"_What_?" they all asked at once.

He took a deep breath and set about trying to explain. "You know how you always seem to come up with the perfect comebacks - the, ah, ultimate comebacks if you will - like, a week too late?"

"Oh, man, yeah," said Guybrush.

"So what?" said Elaine.

"So, you're sitting there wishing you could go back and say 'Oh, yeah? Well...'"

"Yeah..." prompted Miguel, but Tulio could feel Elaine catching on.

"So if you could _predict the future_ - "

"You could access those comebacks exactly when you needed them!" she cried.

"Exactly."

"I see, I see!" said Miguel. "The ability to see the future _is_ the Ultimate Comeback!"

So he pulled out their voodoo canister and, as quickly as possible, popped off the lid and stoppered it with the conveniently similarly-sized Ultimate Comeback. At once Elaine's wedding diamond started glowing a fluorescent purple, and the Comeback in Miguel's hands and the Insult in Guybrush's repelled themselves like the matching ends of magnets. Miguel spaced out for a moment, eyes glossing over just a bit, but then turned to Elaine with an odd look and grinned.

"...I knew this thing would come in handy," he said.

xxxxx

And so this time, they were ready.

Miguel and Tulio leapt in first, knocking down the skeleton pirates that got in the Threepwood-Marleys' way. They darted through afterward, all the way to LeChuck's shack with the hole in the roof, brandishing the Ultimate Comeback ahead of them as they ran.

"Okay," said Guybrush, "_now_ we're here to stop you." He pointed the Comeback at the glowing Insult-LeChuck like a firework rocket, with Elaine clinging tightly to his back like before.

"I can't believe ye dared show yer face here again, Threepwood!"

"I can't believe you dare show your ugly mug _anywhere_," he shot back.

"Arrh, your wit be merely that of a grade-schooler!"

"At least I managed to pass grade school."

"You...fight like a dairy farmer!"

"How appropriate! You fight like a cow!"

"You - yer a big old bed-wetting doody-head!"

"Your mom!"

As he went on, Guybrush's eyes turned brighter and brighter purple with the spell, till he was shining with defensive rage and the air between him and LeChuck bristled with derogatory voodoo. Night fell on the camp as they fought, and then suddenly, it was over.

"_Yes,_" Guybrush barked defiantly, and LeChuck let out his same old tired defeated scream before bursting into a shower of...

Well, of gold, silver and bronze coins, proportionate to the colored parts of him.

Guybrush and Elaine looked at one another. "Well that's convenient."

xxxxx

Outside, all the reanimated skeletons suddenly...deanimated, mid-onslaught.

At the door to LeChuck's cabin, the victorious four shared hugs, kisses, and cries of triumph.

Down in the treasure keep, they hauled out as much as they could carry and more.

On the opposite edge of the campground, Miguel and Elaine found the giant transport cart.

On the way back, Tulio found the matching bracelets.

Back on the beach, they divided the gold in half.

In the morning, all of it - and the ship, and Tulio and Miguel - was gone.

There was a note sitting in the sand outside Elaine and Guybrush's tent, written in Tulio's narrow looping hand. Guybrush picked it up and read it:

_Sorry about all this,_ wrote Tulio, _but you understand, don't you? Nothing personal...it's just you really don't need it nearly as much as we do. Don't take it too hard. We'd love to stay friends. --TR_

Guybrush shook his head as he read it. "After all this," he muttered.

"Wait, look!" said Elaine suddenly, for she'd been walking around to the back of the tent, into the jungle a bit, and had found several dozen crates and chests of treasure set half-hidden in some bushes - along with a second note in Miguel's chicken-scratch.

_Sorry we had to take the ship, but hopefully this is good enough. Tulio doesn't know yet, but I just couldn't let him do it. I worked this out to be three-fifths of it - since you'll be plundering for three soon, after all. Cheers, Miguel_

Elaine smiled, defeated, shaking her head too. "So I suppose he predicted that."

"Predicted what? What does he mean, for three?"

"Guybrush," she said, "I'm _pregnant_."

xxxxx

"Did I tell you, I saw in the future that Elaine's going to have a baby?" said Miguel, gazing off the side of the ship at the ocean as they floated out into the sunrise.

"Oh, no," commented Tulio from the helm, gazing off to the side...at Miguel. "Well, congratulations to her."

"It's a girl," he said. "But I didn't tell her that."

"Heh."

"I wonder if she's already pregnant, or if they, ah, haven't gotten around to that just yet."

Tulio left the helm to stand at Miguel's side, leaning slyly on the ship's railing. "Well, if _I_ were Guybrush...I'd be working on that right now."

Miguel turned slowly to him with a sidelong glance. "I believe I like the sound of that."

But they didn't really act on it. Instead, Miguel just held his arm out over the sea, admiring the glint of his golden bracelet in the new sunlight.

"So does this make us...hitched?" he said with a silly grin.

"As long as we don't have to hyphenate it," said Tulio, fidgeting at his own wrist. "Rodriguez-de la Garza is almost crazier than Threepwood-Marley."

"Well who says your name has to go first?"

Tulio returned to the helm, and they sailed onward.


End file.
